Yeah, I guess, "intelligence is all about awareness of death" is kind of a bomb of a premise. I admit, not the best thought I spat out through my keyboard. I suppose I mean some narrower sense of intelligence here. On one hand, you're absolutely right - crows, octopuses and toddlers solve problems without any hint of understanding mortality. Yet "children have no concept of time" is incorrect: not only do they have one, but most kids also grasp that death is irreversible and happens to everyone by about age 5-7.

I don't blame you for immediately rejecting the rest of it. But do hear me out: the point about the inevitability of invention does have real support. Historians call it multiple discovery - tons of things have been invented independently - calculus, the telephone, the jet engine, to name a few.

Neural nets, GPUs, and the scale of Internet text made something like LLMs close to inevitable. Of course, we could debate forever whether any of these on its own was ever inevitable. The point is - society tolerates any cost of a useful invention for the benefit of saving time. So it's reasonable to assume this will be the case with AI as well, which is really happening as we speak.

This is somewhat of a dramatic statement. What, exactly, is the mechanism by which human culture is erased because LLMs write some stories or compose some music?

I think there could be room for something like how holodeck programs are shown to be authored in Star Trek, i.e.: the author does all the primary work, and then the system, if a particular work's design allows it, extrapolates from that to fill in the blanks when somebody decides to make Moriarty super-intelligent or put a hundred androids in a Wild West scenario or take part in a go-karting death race with Frankenstein's monster.

But, that comes with with the same kind of cultural acknowledgement, as seen with the characters in Star Trek, that such algorithmically generated material is an experimental diversion, and inherently not worth the same respect or focus as experiencing something authored with intentionality by a person.

> it deserves scrutiny and demands elaboration.

These challenges never go anywhere because it’s essentially a religious conviction. We’re likely in sort of uncharted territory on a macro scale and I reckon people a) either acknowledge that or refuse, and b), either trust or distrust the tech world’s stewardship of this technology. There’s a hundred bazillion data points, and I’m pretty pessimistic about the tech scene at large right now, but I think reasonable people can disagree on this without being factually or logically wrong. But true zealots in the midst of such uncertainty are driven by faith, which can certainly be deftly swayed over time, but definitely can’t be conquered in a debate.

Eh, I think many of the harms of AI are currently also nebulous. It's not as though the harms are all concrete and massive and the benefits are vague and "in the future"

This sounds intriguing. Can you expand on what your thinking is or link to somewhere I could read more?

Or just short term gains versus long term pains (or vice versa, depending on how you view it)

I feel like in my life all I ever see is people mortgaging the future for today though. Hey how about that record storm in California?

It's a multi-mandate to focus on what's best for your yourself and society such as your mind, your body, your chosen family, your friends, your neighborhood/community, your city, state, country, the global population, and more abstract things such as the human condition, when evaluating things such as privilege or fairness or duty.

You often have to make compromises somewhere in the hierarchy, especially in late-stage capitalism where even access to basic needs comes at a moral cost, and as such those compromises sometimes come with a moral duty. I am writing this via a computer built from limited natural resources, some of which have been obtained through what I see as slave labor. I don't eat meat and still have to acknowledge the harm that clearing and maintaining farmland does to wildlife, even if the result could theoretically be a net gain.

When you start viewing situations through the lens of game theory, you realise some compromises are inevitable for the rational individual. But you must acknowledge the individual is not the only concern. As such, I use AI as part of my work, but I opposed the local buildout of a large data center in my community and tried in vain to make the person responsible for the deal understand the issues it could introduce. This isn't NIMBYism, we need a halt on all buildouts until fundamental environmental and accountability concerns are addressed.

And many other aspects of my existence and quality of life, poor and underprivileged as I was growing up, have depended upon US imperialism. I have also produced a ton of waste just existing and owning pets. It's abhorrent.

I continue to ask myself how I can fulfill the moral duty which I have accrued and reduce my dependence on exploitative economic systems, but I also recognize that AI is the new social leverage and we only have so much time to use it to our advantage before it becomes institutionalized and wielded against the people. I also might only find future income stability by evolving with my industry.

Life is complicated.